"Dearest, I beg of you, sleep properly and go for walks." - Kafka
We’ve all been told to go for walks when we’re feeling down. It’s one of the first things someone will recommend to you, or you start telling yourself to do at a point. Not a workout, just a walk.
That distinction is important to me. We prioritise fastness in most facets of our life, and its making me (and doubtless many other people) miserable. The constant being on top of things, the need to make everything faster, prioritising output instead of the process. The painting of health as workout classes and gym memberships and unhealthily pushing yourself.
When I say I want to go for a walk, or recommend it to people, I mean the furthest thing from that. I mean slowing down. Moving. Breathing. Noticing. We spend so much of our lives now inches away from a screen. The world is simultaneously so large and so small.
I’ve recently started going for walks with no music in, as that is just another way of making my world feel smaller than it is, another way to subconsciously measure time. I haven’t managed to completely omit my phone on walks yet. While I admit that a big part of that is learning to let go of the anxiety I feel without a way to contact people or relying on my cards instead of apple pay, the other is having a camera handy.
I’ve always loved photography, but intentionally challenging myself to see pretty things in my everyday surroundings has helped immensely with learning how to slow down on walks. I’ve learned to love the process of scanning my surroundings, no longer walking so fast to music that everything becomes blurry around me. It’s led to some of my favourite photographs I’ve ever taken. Just the raw file, no edits.